How to play
One new puzzle every day, in one of three modes. Here's how each one works.
The daily puzzle
A new puzzle appears every day at midnight in your local time, and everyone plays the same one. The card at the top tells you the mode (Rank it, Guess the top 5, Match it or Tier it), gives the puzzle a headline, and says exactly what is being measured, for example "Average annual hours worked per worker" or "Arrests per 100,000 people". Read that line carefully: the measure, the unit and the year often decide the answer.
Rank it
You get five or six cards, each a country or a group, and the real values in a column beside them (highest at the top — a few puzzles are flipped and say so). Match each card to the right number. Drag the cards, or tap the ▲ and ▼ arrows, then press the white Lock it in button.
After each lock-in, cards in the right spot turn green and are pinned in place. Cards in the wrong spot turn red and shake. Rearrange the red ones and lock in again. You have five tries. Solve it in one or two tries for a celebration. Miss every card on a country or demographic Rank it and you may see a cheeky Racist! or Xenophobe! flash. If you run out of tries, the correct order is revealed with every value, each item's rank among all countries in the source, and a short fact about the result.
Guess the top 5
Here you name the five countries at the top of a list, from every country with data (often 150 or more). Start typing a country, choose it from the suggestions, and press Guess or Enter. A correct guess fills its slot on the board and costs nothing. A wrong guess is a miss, and you can miss ten times. Every guess shows that country's real rank and value, so a miss still tells you whether you were close.
After a few misses you get hints. Each hint is one fact about the highest-ranked country you haven't found yet: first its continent, then its population, its income level, its capital and finally its first letter. Your score is how many of the five you found, plus your average rank: the average position of all your guesses, where lower means closer. If two countries tie for fifth place, either one counts.
Tier it
Tier it is for stats where several countries share the same value. Drop each country onto a labeled tier row (several can share a tier). Drag a chip onto a row, or tap a chip and then the row. Lock it in: right tiers turn green and lock, wrong ones turn red. You get five tries. After you finish, the real percentage stays on each chip.
Match it
Match it shows four to seven people or countries and the same number of clues. Each clue is a true, sourced fact about exactly one of them. Drag a clue onto a person, or tap a clue and then tap the person. When every clue is placed, press Lock it in. Right pairs turn green and lock, wrong pairs turn red, and you fix them and try again, up to five tries. The answer screen lists every pair with the fuller story and a link to its source.
Values, sources and caveats
Values are always shown: Rankd is about knowing which number belongs to which country, not about memorising the numbers. Every puzzle names its source and links to it on the answer screen, along with the year of the data. Some puzzles deal with sensitive subjects like crime, health, religion or politics. These carry a short caveat explaining what the numbers measure and what they don't (for example, that arrests are not convictions, or that a survey was self-reported). Puzzles about suicide include a link to crisis support.
Practice
Practice deals a random puzzle from the full datasets behind the game, so you can keep playing after the daily. Each Practice puzzle is built on the spot from a real ranked list with the same rules as the daily puzzles: items are well spread out, so no two values are too close to call, and well-known countries are mixed in. Press 🎲 New for another one. Practice games don't count toward your stats or streak.
Archive and streaks
Missed a day? Every past daily puzzle is in the Archive, with a tick for the ones you've played. Archive games are just for fun and don't change your streak. Your streak counts the days in a row on which you played the daily puzzle on that day. Your stats (games played, solved, current and best streak) and your progress are saved only in your browser on this device. Nothing is sent to us. You can wipe it all at any time in Settings → Your data → Clear all data.
Sharing
When you finish, press Share my result to copy a spoiler-free summary (coloured squares, no answers) with a link, so friends can play the same puzzle.